April 16, 2023: Visit to a Nunnery in Tsum

Today in beautiful and remote Tsum, the mountains were shrouded in mist, and when they appeared, the snow seemed to be melting in the distance.

With the head of the Tsum community, our guiding monk from Thrangu Monastery, and two conservators from our team, we trekked to a nearby nunnery to look at wall paintings and thangkas in their original shrine hall.

We went through a low structure with paintings inside, that needs some revisions as horseback riders bump their heads on it, as do tall tourists!

Sign for nunnery.

Their Buddhist teacher, Lama Zopa, had recently died and so their newer shrine hall was full of people from surrounding villages reciting prayers.

On the walls in their original nunnery, their original wall paintings were flaking off:

And the original nunnery had many clay statues that have been painted and repainted (I inserted temporarily the small centimetre scale for this photo):

Then we examined thangkas that were rolled up in the old nunnery, and used a variety of examination methods including plain light, transmitted light and raking light to reveal the condition. Tsum has a long agreement amongst its communities to not kill or harm living creatures, so we gently brushed away insects.

Conservators discussing the condition of a thangka (Buddhist iconographic image):

Image documenting the condition of the reverse.

Image documenting condition of cloth that painting is created on by shining a light through it.

On the trek back to Tsum Monastery we once again crossed the swaying bridge over the river.